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John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I just looked over my HIMSS calendar and I have almost 50 events listed and I haven’t even finished scheduling my week. That’s going to make for a packed week at the mecca of healthcare IT conferences, the HIMSS Annual Conference. If you read this site, you’re probably already familiar with HIMSS and the annual conference that will bring together ~45,000 health IT professionals and ~1300 exhibitors. It’s massive and packed full of incredible people, technology, and experiences.

Each year, I post my schedule and guide to the HIMSS Annual Conference. This year is no different. I’m happy to share some of the places I’ll be at HIMSS and the topics and sessions that interest me. I hope that readers of this blog will join me at some of these events and come say hi. There’s nothing better than meeting someone who reads your blog.

I won’t go through each of the HIMSS 2016 keynotes in detail, but I’m excited to hear what Michael Dell and Peyton Manning say for their keynote addresses. I also enjoy a good “mental floss” keynote that I think Dr. Berger will provide. Most people will be gone for it, unless they’re staying to hear Peyton Manning talk that afternoon. It’s too bad since I always find it a refreshing end to an exhausting week.

Each year of HIMSS, they create some sort of innovation section of the conference. Sometimes this includes conference sessions. Other times it includes an exhibit hall area. This year they have both in what they are calling HX360. I heard Shahid Shah mention today that the great thing about HX360 companies is that these companies are often doing something pretty unique. Unlike some other HIMSS vendors, you don’t usually know 20 other companies doing the same thing when you’re talking to HX360 companies.

There’s also a great luncheon keynote for HX360 that includes Mitt Romney and Michael Leavitt (Former HHS Secretary and Governor of Utah). I like them because they’re connected enough to Washington to have tremendous insight, but far enough removed that they can actually speak frankly about what’s happening. The one problem with HX360 is that it requires a separate registration. So, we’ll see how much of it I get to see. I might have to live vicariously through other people’s tweets on the #HX360 hashtag.

Now for some very specific conference sessions, meetups, and events:

#HITMC Meetup – What has become a bit of an annual tradition, Shahid and I will be holding a meetup with members of the healthcare IT marketing and PR community and the broader healthcare social media community as well. The official title of the session is Marketing to Customers in an Uncertain Healthcare IT Marketplace and it’s happening Monday, Feb 29 from 3:00-3:45 at the HIMSS spot. Join us for an open and engaging discussion with the community.

#HealthITChicks Meetup – I’ve been so impressed with the efforts Jennifer Dennard has put together to bring together the #HealthITChicks group. What an amazing community that’s formed. This community of women (and men) are some of the best and brightest in healthcare IT. They’re doing a meetup on Tuesday, March 1 from 10-10:45 at the HIMSS Spot. Check out the full list of speakers, and don’t be surprised when you see the caliber of people who attend this meetup.

@MandiBPro Tweetup – At 2 PM on Tuesday March 1st, Mandi Bishop (better known as @mandibpro) and Dr. Joseph Kim (@DrJosephKim) are doing a tweetup at the Dell booth #4416 where they’ll be talking “Can the Right Data at the Right Place and Right Time Make a Difference?” Should be a lively discussion since if you know Mandi, you know how much she loves data. Is there anything better at HIMSS than talking to someone who’s passionate about a topic?

DataMotion Video Interview – I’m excited to take part in a number of video interviews with the team from DataMotion at booth #12144. One of those interviews will be with DataMotion advisory board member Peter Tippett, MD, PhD. He’s a great advisor for a company like DataMotion that focuses on secure data delivery and communication solutions in healthcare. I look forward to hearing what else they’re talking about at HIMSS16.

Sutter Health Video Interview at SAP – Shahid Shah will be interviewing Souvik Das from Sutter Health at the SAP booth #5828. They’ll be talking about SAP’s HANA being used for analytics and data aggregation for managing an ACO shared savings program. Given ACOs current track record, I’m interested to hear how their ACO has done. Shahid’s interviews are always must see for me thanks to his personal “No BS” rule.

#HIMSS16 Social Media Ambassador Meetup – Bring 20 of the most active social media people at HIMSS into one session and that’s what you’ll have at the Social Media Ambassador meetup. No, this session isn’t just for social media ambassadors. Everyone is welcome to come and interact with this group of social media ninjas. Just be ready to take a selfie.

New Media Meetup – I can’t believe this will be the 7th annual New Media Meetup at HIMSS. I’m biased since I organize the event (which is technically not affiliated with HIMSS), but it’s an amazing experience to be with so many amazing healthcare social media people in one room. Be sure to register if you want to come. A big thank to you to Stericycle Communication Solutions for sponsoring the New Media Meetup.

ONC’s Meaningful Use Session – ONC has a whole schedule of sessions at HIMSS. The one that stood out to me was this MU session called “Understanding the 2015 Edition: Meaningful Use & Other Use Cases.” This session is being held in the Sands Expo, Palazzo B and Elise Sweeney Anthony, J.D., Acting Director, Office of Policy, and Michael Lipinski, J.D., Division Director for Federal Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Policy are presenting. This felt like a real practical session where I could learn something as opposed to many government sessions where they use vague generalities that don’t better my life.

Patient Engagement: No Diamond Ring Required – On the last day of HIMSS I always try and sneak in a session or two while everyone is mostly gone. There are often some nice gems of sessions and you don’t have to fight for seats. This year I’m looking at this patient engagement session by the leaders of the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum. I’ve heard good things about the work they’re doing, so I’d like to learn more.

Like I said, I have almost 50 appointments on my calendar (including a party or two), so this is just a small sample of sessions, meetups and events that others are welcome to attend. I’ll also be doing a video interview with Jon Melling from Pivot Point Consulting which should be a lot of fun. I’ll be talking with the people from HIPAA One to see how their efforts to automate HIPAA compliance is going along with their partnerships with many EHR vendors. I’m also interested to learn about what large companies like Oracle and Samsung are doing in healthcare. I think they’ll both have much larger presences than past years.

Plus, I always like to block out some free time on the exhibit floor so I can see if ClinicSpectrum will be attracting attention with balloons and jewelry again and hopefully I can make some time to enjoy Greythorn’s foot massages (I’m sure to need it). Given there are ~1300 exhibitors vying for your attention, you never know the serendipitous connection and interaction that can occur just by strolling through the HIMSS exhibit hall. Yes, be sure to plan ahead to get the most out of HIMSS, but include in that plan some time to explore the unknown (Yes, that includes the exhibit booths downstairs at the Sands Convention Center).

Just writing this up has me excited and tired. I can’t wait for the fun to begin next week at HIMSS in Las Vegas! I’ll be doing 2 differentblabs leading up to HIMSS and one blab after HIMSS, so be sure to check those out too and join our conversation about the HIMSS experience.

Bonus Tip: As a local Las Vegas resident, I feel it my responsibility to share some local insights into Las Vegas experiences you might not expect to find in Las Vegas. Here’s what I suggested to one person who asked me for some unique Las Vegas experiences that were a little more kitschy/fun than you can normally find on the strip:

Sounds like you need to check out the new Downtown Las Vegas that we call Fremont East. I’d start with some time at the Downtown Container Park. It has kitschy/fun experiences and live music written all over it. They also play live music on the weekends and have a mix of stores, restaurants and bars that make for a fun experience. The fire breathing preying mantis at the entrance just adds to the fun along with the 2 story slide.

You can grab some great bbq from Big Ern’s at the container park, or head over to La Comida (mexican) or Le Thai which are both very popular. Afterwards, you can grab a drink at Downtown Cocktail Room (intentionally hard to find, but it’s right on Las Vegas Boulevard and there’s a black door with no handle and just one small sign above the entrance. It’s kind of speak easy style). After that you can head over to the Gold Spike for some games, music, and fun. They rotate live music and DJs.

It will be something you totally don’t expect from Las Vegas, but sounds like it will be right up your alley. The other night you should do something more traditional Las Vegas and grab any of the Cirque du Soleil shows (except for the Criss Angel one). They’re not cheap, but they’re awesome.

If you want a surprisingly incredible performance check out Terry Fator. For outdoor fun, rent a car and drive out to Red Rock.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

UPDATE: Registration for this event is closed. If you’re registered for the event, we’ll send you an email with more details. Unfortunately, we’re at capacity, so if you’re not registered you won’t be able to attend.

For those of you planning to attend the HIMSS 2016 conference in Las Vegas, I’m excited to share the details of the 7th Annual New Media Meetup at HIMSS. For those who’ve missed the last 6 events, it’s a unique event that brings together healthcare IT bloggers, tweeters, and other social media influencers at the mecca of Healthcare IT conferences.

It’s incredible to think that this will be our 7th year hosting the New Media Meetup during HIMSS. Since HIMSS 2016 is returning to my hometown of Las Vegas, I knew we had to set a new bar for the event. Luckily our sponsor, Stericycle Communication Solutions, was on board with my ambitious plans. I hope everyone will spend some time checking out Stericycle Communication Solutions and thank them for sponsoring the event.

Here’s a quick summary of what we have planned for the event:When: Wednesday 3/2 6:00-8:00 PM (Unofficial Karaoke after party starts at 8)Where: Gilley’s at Treasure Island Casino – 3300 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109 MAP (Treasure Island is a short walk across the street from the Venetian/Sands)Who: Anyone who uses or is interested in New Media (Blogs, Twitter, Social Media, Periscope, Blab, etc)What: Food, Drinks, Mechanical Bull, Dance Floor, Giveaways, and Amazing People

Registration is Closed!

Note: If you’ve registered for the event, you’ll get an email with more details on the event. Since the event is at capacity, if you haven’t registered you’ll be unable to attend.

Those interested in the New Media Meetup at HIMSS will want to check out the full scale Healthcare IT Marketing and PR Conference that we’re hosting in Atlanta April 6-8, 2016. It’s a special 3 days devoted to health IT marketing and PR professionals.

A really big thank you also goes out to all the members of Influential Networks and Healthcare Scene that help promote the New Media Meetup. This event was originally brought together through social media and is still largely organized thanks to social media.

Let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to seeing many of you in Las Vegas very soon!

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

While at HIMSS I had the pleasure of spending some time talking with Rohit Nayak, VP of Physician Tech Solutions at Quest Diagnostics. Not only is Rohit a very nice gentleman, but he also provides a number of really interesting perspectives on the healthcare industry. Quest is obviously known in the lab world, but as I mentioned last year, Quest is shifting from being a lab company to a technology company. This is clearly seen by their Care360 EHR product.

At one point, Rohit and I started talking about Quest’s approach to interfacing with EHR software. When you consider that Quest has the lab results that many EHR companies want and now Quest is offering their own EHR it makes for an interesting situation. Rohit told me that Quest has 120 EHR interfaces. He told me Quest’s approach was to be open when it comes to sharing data.

Before I talk more about these interfaces, I think it’s worth commenting on the 120 EHR interface number. The number of EHR vendors is often debated and discussed. I personally like to use the 300 EHR companies number. I’ve seen some go as high as 600 EHR companies, but I think those people are counting any software regardless of if it offers a comprehensive EHR product. For example, they might include an ePrescribing app which is part of an EHR, but I wouldn’t count it in my number.

With that as background, I find the 120 EHR interfaces with Quest quite interesting. Outside of some very localized EHR companies, you’d think that most legitimate EHR companies would have been almost forced to build an interface with Quest. Although, someone did recently tell me that Quest and LabCorp only have 7% of the lab market so maybe I’m overstating EHR vendors need to interface with Quest. I’d be interested to hear from EHR vendors who don’t interface with Quest and why they haven’t yet done so.

Heading back to interfacing with Quest, I was interested in how Care360 EHR users that don’t use Quest for their labs would be handled. Say I was a doctor who used LabCorp for my labs, but wanted to use Quest’s Care360 EHR. Would Quest support a lab interface from Care360 to LabCorp? Rohit told me that Quest would have no problem integrating Care360 with Labcorp, but that LabCorp wouldn’t let them do it. Don’t you love competition?

Of course, I only had the chance to talk with Quest about this topic. I don’t remember ever even seeing LabCorp at HIMSS. Considering LabCorp hasn’t taken the EHR route directly that could be why. I’m not sure many LabCorp users would want to use the Care360 EHR, but it is interesting to consider.

Rohit and I also started an interesting discussion about how well EHR software is consuming the Lab data that’s being sent across these lab interfaces. I’ve asked him to do a guest post on the subject, so I hope to bring you that in the future. You can also check out this 5 EHR Questions with Rohit Nayak video I did while at HIMSS as well.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I partially understand why many choose to go home from HIMSS early. There’s certainly plenty that can be captured at HIMSS in the first couple days. Add in that coming to HIMSS for many is a job. Although, I must admit that each year on the final day of HIMSS I always feel like so many people miss out on some of the best keynote speakers they have speak at HIMSS.

This year was no exception with Donna Brazile and Dana Perino entertaining and informing. Dan Buettner was also surprisingly good with so many nuggets to think about. I admit going into it I wondered what he’d really be able to say, but it was a really interesting experience full of many points to consider.

For those that missed Dan Buettner’s keynote on Blue Zones, here are the tweets I found interesting:

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Today I was able to finally relax and enjoy HIMSS 2012. Although, I must admit that if I were a company that wanted to get access to talk to me, I’d look at either coming early or staying until the last day of HIMSS. However, I didn’t see any vendors left at HIMSS, but there were two really entertaining and interesting keynotes.

Today I’ll use the tweets that I collected during this morning’s political keynote to provide you some understanding of some of what was said. While they marketed it as a debate between Donna Brazile and Dana Perino, there really wasn’t a debate. I think this was actually a good thing. What we got instead of a debate was two really charming and intelligent women entertaining and educating the crowd. I’m sure many will complain that they didn’t cover much healthcare, but I personally didn’t care. Maybe I didn’t care as much since I got enough healthcare the rest of the week. Plus, I’m all about learning in all areas.

Without further ado, here’s some of the most interesting tweets from the HIMSS 2012 Keynote:

In between this keynote and the afternoon keynote, I planned to do a 1 minute video interview with Charles Webster, MD who had a hat cam. Well, the 1 minute video didn’t turn out quite like I thought it would go. I guess HIMSS finally caught up with me. Here’s the video:

Charles Webster has a really simple but powerful service called EHR Workflow. He allows someone to take some really simple to create data elements from an EHR and to create a nice looking map of where the bottlenecks in your EHR workflow exist. I encourage people to take a look at it and let me know what you think.

I may try to do a Twitter summary of the second keynote this weekend. It had some really interesting findings. Now time for my HIMSS12 Recovery!

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Today I had an amazing series of meeting with really smart people. Many of my findings from those meetings will be featured in blog posts over the next month after HIMSS. I’ve come across some trends and ideas that I think readers will be really excited to hear about.

However, I’d say that today was marked by social media at HIMSS 2012 for me. Here’s a quick run down of the social media events I participated in.

First, Shahid Shah, the Healthcare IT Guy and Jennifer Dennard joined me in holding the Genius Bar in the social media center. It’s been interesting to see the variety of people that have come by the genius sessions. I think the idea of having a genius bar is a really good one and I think the HIMSS social media staff have liked the idea a lot as well. I can see it really expanding and do even better than we’ve done this year. Although, this isn’t surprising since we through the idea together a week or two before HIMSS.

Immediately after the genius bar, they held the #HITsm Tweetup. It was fantastic fun with so many familiar faces. There was only one main downside to the Tweetup. The internet connection wasn’t working and so I could only do it on my phone. The internet situation has been a problem for me for a lot of HIMSS. I can’t say how annoying it is to try and cover HIMSS and not have a decent internet connection. It’s pretty hit or miss from my experience. I’m not sure why.

Regardless of the internet connection, it was a pretty interesting experience to do a tweetup live. I almost wish it would have been a silent tweetup. Basically, random laughs and what not. Either way though, at least MelSmithJones was thinking inside the box and we got her to think inside the box. #insidejoke

In the afternoon, I participated in a Meet the Bloggers panel with Jennifer Dennard, Neil Versel and Carissa Caramanis O’Brien. I think the audience got some decent information from what was said. I must admit that one thing I loved was looking into the audience and knowing so many people who had come to hear what we had to say. A number of people said some kind things to me about the event which were really appreciated. Although, my favorite part was a lot of the individual discussions I had with so many people after the Meet the Blogger panel.

Then, to top the night off we had the really great 3rd Annual New Media Meetup. I think we had about 120 people show up to the event. The band was admittedly too loud for a really good discussion, but as someone said on Twitter at least they were a good band. A really big thanks to simplifyMD and Ozmosis for sponsoring the event. simplifyMD even stepped up and decided to add some food at the event. They were outstanding to work with and the three people who won Kindle Fire’s from Ozmosis were absolutely excited.

At the core of all the social media mentioned above is: People!

Meeting with and connecting with interesting, smart, unique, talented people is always a wonderful experience and that’s why I love social media.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

As you can probably imagine, things have been extraordinarily crazy with HIMSS happening this week. My first HIMSS event actually was on Saturday and Monday I enjoyed a number of interviews and spent some time at the venture forum. As some of you know, my goal at HIMSS is mostly to spend time around really smart people having really interesting discussions. These discussions form the basis for a multitude of posts to come post-HIMSS. Unfortunately, that means much of the best things I learn and talk about at HIMSS won’t come until the weeks and sometimes months after HIMSS.

If you want to get a bit of an idea of the insane activity that’s happening at HIMSS, you should browse through the various press releases on EMR and Health IT News. David has done an amazing job posting all the various press release announcements that are sent out before and during HIMSS. You’ll need to go through a few pages of press releases, but even browsing through the titles offers an interesting perspective on the industry and what it’s trying to communicate.

I also would be remiss if I didn’t post one of the most incredibly things I learned at HIMSS. It has almost nothing to do with Healthcare IT, except for the fact that Inga at HIStalk LOVES shoes and so shoes are relevant at HIStalkapalooza. I guess some other people take shoes very seriously as well. I learned that Timur Tugberk from DrFirst was wearing an $1250 pair of shoes. When he said this, Brittanie from ESD said you know that’s twelve hundred and fifty dollars, not twelve dollars and fifty cents. Of course, with that background, I of course took a picture for others to see:
Funny thing is. I bet I haven’t spent $1250 in my entire life on shoes. I guess different strokes for different folks.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

It’s Sunday and the excitement to see old friends and hear interesting things at HIMSS 2012 is just around the corner. The #HIMSS12 hashtag is off the charts with people flying into Las Vegas and others talking about what they’re doing, seeing, hearing and expecting from HIMSS Las Vegas.

Most people on Twitter are quite excited for HIMSS (as am I), but a few have said that people won’t be missing much. I thought about it for a minute and realized that the thing I love most about HIMSS is meeting really smart people. With 37,000 people likely to attend HIMSS 2012, there are plenty of smart people to meet and connect with at HIMSS.

Justin Barnes, VP at Greenway Medical, is one of the smart people I like to talk with at HIMSS. Turns out that tonight he was sharing some of that wisdom, information and perspective on Twitter tonight. So, this EMR and Health IT Twitter roundup is the Justin Barnes edition.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

As many of you know, I posted my HIMSS 2012 session schedule on EMR and EHR a few weeks back. Sadly, many of those sessions have been taken off my schedule, but a number of really good ones still remain. I just counted 27 other meetings with vendors the week of HIMSS. I think it’s fair to say I’m doing my part to see as many as I can to provide you some really interesting coverage.

Outside of that hectic schedule, you’ll also be able to find me at a number of events (mostly social media related):Meet the Bloggers Panel – This is happening Wed 2/22 4:00-5:00PM at the HIMSS Social Media Center. This will be a fun panel for me with two people I know quite well and love: Jennifer Dennard and Neil Versel. Plus, Carissa Caramanis O’Brien who I don’t know that well, but look forward to meeting as well. If you like social media or blogging, you’ll enjoy this.

HIMSS Social Media Center Genius Bar – I’ll be there Tuesday, 11:30 am-12:00 pm, Wednesday 10:30 am-11:00 am, and Thursday 11:30 am-12:00 pm at the HIMSS Social Media Center. Stop by and ask any question you want. You can make an appointment for it here.

New Media Meetup at HIMSS Sponsored by simplifyMD – We’re almost out of space for this event so I’ve stopped any major promotion of it. It amazes me the wonderful people on the list. Soon I’ll probably have to change it to a wait list signup once we reach capacity.

I also wanted to point out some of the interesting things that sponsors of EMR and HIPAA are doing at HIMSS. I just asked them for info late, so a number of my advertisers haven’t been able to get me anything yet. If they send me their info, I’ll update the post.

DrFirst is presenting the HIMSS Hero at this year’s event. DrFirst will be doing Chair and foot massages, a Caricature artist turning you into our Superhero, Collapsible water bottles, House Footies (DrFirst branded hospital socks), and Giving away an iPad 2. Stop by to learn more about DrFirst’s shift to an EHR platform company.Location: Booth #5456

Cerner is excited to expand our presence at HIMSS12. The Cerner booth #476 will provide HIMSS attendees the opportunity to connect with peers, interact with Cerner associates and learn about Cerner solutions. Multiple Cerner clients will be in the booth to offer peer perspectives to physicians in attendance and to present how they are progressing in their journeys toward achieving Meaningful use, high quality measures and greater efficiency. Cerner associates will talk through complete workflow and documentation solutions for interdisciplinary teams, medications management, device connectivity, quality reporting, revenue cycle management and leading-edge services. In addition to the show floor, 15 Cerner clients will present in the general HIMSS educational tracks. Cerner will also participate in the Interoperability Showcase and IDC-10 Knowledge Center, where we will showcase specific solutions in respective areas.Location: Booth #14542-, 476

GE Healthcare IT delivers workflow solutions for specialists and tools which provide insights for
hospital leadership to enable healthcare systems to run more effectively and efficiently- resulting
in better quality care for more patients at a lower cost. At HIMSS12, we’ll showcase highlights of
our extensive portfolio featuring numerous new product introductions. Now available, Centricity
Patient Portal 13 is a flexible, scalable, customizable portals that extends the provider workflow to
the patient’s home. With a range of easy-to-use self-service tools, Patient Online enhances patient
communications, optimizes staff and provider productivity, and can help strengthen the provider’s
market and competitive position. It helps customers meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 patient and
family engagement criteria and prepare them for expected Stage 2 requirements. Centricity
Perinatal-Connect provides the ability to correlate data from disparate Hospital Information
Systems (HIS) and other sources onto the fetal strip. It enables access to multiple fetal monitoring
strips while allowing documentation in the HIS all at the same time, without obstructing any
clinical information, helping clinicians deliver their best care all while maximizing current hospital
investment in perinatal IT. GE Healthcare IT will also demonstrate planned capabilities of its 50-50 joint venture with Microsoft, Caradigm, launching later this year.Location: Booth #2635

This year, Practice Fusion has teamed up with Fitbit and our blogger friends Brian Ahier and Don Fluckinger to kick off our contest. Brian and Don will be competing for the most number of steps for a chance to win a charitable donation made by Practice Fusion in their name. HIMSS attendees interested in winning a Fitbit of their own can simply tweet their response to “Why do you want a Fitbit?” using the hashtags #fitbit and #HIMSS12 Unable to attend HIMSS12 but still want to experience the action? Virtual HIMSS12 is for you. Our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Robert Rowley and Las Vegas hand surgeon, Dr. Andrew Bronstein will be presenting an on-demand session titled Interoperability on the Front Lines: It’s Already Here.Location: Booth #4074

HITR.com will exhibit at booth 7707 with its affiliates Billian’s HealthDATA and Porter Research. The HITR team is looking forward to meeting attendees and showing them the benefits a free membership in the HITR.com community can bring – healthcare IT benchmarking surveys and results, social networking opportunities, and more! Register at the booth to win one of our twice-daily Kindle drawings.Location: Booth #7707

EHR Scope will be exhibiting in booth 13756. We’ll be doing video interviews for www.EHRtv.com, including some walk-in interviews. At the booth we’ll also be showing other activities of EHR Scope, including www.EMRConsultant.com, as well as Dragon Medical Spanish, which is now available for Latin America. In addition to the activities at the booth, we’ll have 2 roaming camera crews doing interviews of exhibitors, by appointment only.Location: Booth #13756

At HIMSS, Amazing Charts is introducing Version 6.2, with the ability to connect with HIEs and PHRs automatically. On signing a note, the patient’s CCD is automatically uploaded to the patient selected PHR or HIE (See Screenshot). In 2011, Amazing Charts received the Best In KLAS Award for #1 EMR for 1-10 Physicians.Location: Booth #13316

Mitochon is the first FREE ONC-ATCB Certified, web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) Health Information Exchange (HIE) and Patient Health Record (PHR) solution for medical professionals. The FREE EHR platform combines Scheduling, Charting, ePrescribing Labs and Collaboration of Care. This year at HIMSS Mitochon has a major announcement taking place on Monday February 20th. Dr. AndreVovan, Founder and Chief Medical Officer for Mitochon stated “all roads are leading to Accountable Care Organizations (ACO)/Integrated Delivery Systems and Mitochon is positioned to enable organizations to reach that destination.” Look for this announcement to learn more about Mitochon’s new offering and check out Mitochon’s Booth #265.Location: Booth #265

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Since I have HIMSS on the mind (as has probably been seen from my previous posts), I figured I’d talk about what we can expect from meaningful use at HIMSS 2012 in Las Vegas.

Meaningful Use Conversations Dominate
I think with all certainty all of us will be tired of hearing the word meaningful use after HIMSS. I might have to try and keep track of how many conversations I have where the words meaningful use aren’t used. Notice I’m counting the ones where it’s not used since I know that almost every conversation will include meaningful use.

I’m not sure that’s very healthy for the industry, but I think that’s the reality of where we’re at. While I’m sure I’ll ask plenty of questions about meaningful use as well, my favorite EHR vendors are probably going to be those that say: we meet meaningful use, we’ve abstracted meaningful use so its not an annoyance to doctors, and here’s what we’ve done to innovate our product outside of MU.

Meaningful Use Stage 2
Any day now I think that ONC/CMS is going to announce the final details for meaningful use stage 2. I imagine the regulatory process could push this so that ONC/CMS announce meaningful use stage 2 at HIMSS, but from what I’ve read I think they want to get it out before HIMSS. I hope they’re successful in making this happen.

Either way, I’ll be surprised if we don’t know about meaningful use stage 2 before/during HIMSS. So, if you want to be in the know, be prepared to talk about the final details of meaningful use stage 2. In the mean time, check out Lynn’s previous MU Monday post about meaningful use stage 2.

Federal IT Participation at HIMSS 12
Every healthcare related part of the federal government is going to be represented at HIMSS 12. HIMSS has been nice enough to provide a page listing all of HHS, CMS, ONC, AHRQ, CDC, HRSA, NIST, OCR, SSA, and VA sessions at HIMSS 2012. My only complaint with that page is that there are still a bunch of details missing on a number of the sessions. I imagine this is the government dragging their feet, but it sure makes it hard to plan.

While many of the government sessions can be dry and boring (partially attributed to what I call the government muzzle), it can be a really good place to hear the direction of the federal government when it comes to healthcare IT directly from their own mouth.

I also suggest that Farzad Mostashari’s keynote address won’t be nearly as interesting to someone familiar with healthcare IT as his ONC Townhall: Advancing Health IT into the Future session on Wed, 2/22 at 2:15 in San Polo 3503. I know I also want to work in a session on MU stage 2 and the future of EHR certification from the federal perspective as well.

“Meaningful” References
Is it just me, or do other people have a problem using the word meaningful now. At least it’s a challenge with many of my healthcare friends. Although, sometimes I throw it in there just for irony’s sake. Hopefully this post was meaningful to you.

Also, a big thanks to all those that filled out the EMR and HIPAA reader survey. I’ve loved all the feedback. Interestingly enough, one of the more common feedback items was that you liked the Meaningful Use Monday series. We’ll do what we can to keep it going.

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